Word: belfasters
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Back on the streets of Belfast, Adams turned his energies toward revitalizing Sinn Fein. "He is a political genius," says Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, a fiery Republican activist in the 1970s. "He has great patience. I've seen him under pressure, and he never loses his temper. He encourages debate and slowly builds consensus so he can take the whole movement along...
...happened so often in the past, Adams' measured words somehow turned violence into a plea for peace. His emergence as one of the key men to reckon with in Northern Ireland has brought him a long way from the rough streets of Belfast, where he began his activist career. Only two days before the attacks, he was rambling through the streets of west Belfast in a cold drizzle. He paused in front of a rubble heap, which for him was a monument to a heroic political struggle, not just the remnants of a high-rise public housing project. "These...
...Catholic west Belfast, Adams, 45, is a hero. But outside those confines, his image is far more ambiguous. Is he an ardent civil rights protester inspired by Martin Luther King? Or is he just a third-generation nationalist bruiser following in the footsteps of a father who was jailed by the British and a grandfather who stood shoulder to shoulder with James Connolly? Is he a peacemaker who has gradually pruned away the violent rhetoric of his party to prepare the way for compromise and reconciliation? Or is he a former -- even present -- I.R.A. member who sits on the Army...
...leader of Sinn Fein came early to this dual role. In 1972, as street battles between Catholic Republicans and Protestant Unionists raged in Belfast, Adams was arrested by the British army and interned without charge. "There is nothing like being in an interrogation room to test your commitment," he says. He became a prison leader, and at 23 he was plucked out of jail with other I.R.A. veterans to negotiate a cease-fire in London. The peace pact was short-lived, and soon Adams was back behind bars, where he settled down to a "monastic regimen of studying, research...
Adams gradually moved Sinn Fein into electoral politics. The party won some local elections, and in 1983 Adams was elected to Britain's House of Commons from the Belfast West constituency. He refused to take up his seat, since it required him to pledge allegiance to the Queen, but he relished the prestige of being a British M.P. In 1992 Adams lost the seat and was bitterly disappointed. "It was our own fault," he says. "We were complacent, and I was skating around the country doing other work...